Object details
Object number
2.b.3.2
Creator(s)
Title
Letter to Pietro Aretino
Date
6 November 1537
Medium
Ink on paper
Language
Italian
Publication Place
Ferrara
Dimensions
30.3 x 22.2 x 1.2 cm (11 15/16 x 8 3/4 x 1/2 in.)
Signatures, inscriptions, and markings
Embossed (front of binding): Coat of arms of Innocent XIII (Michelangelo Contri r.1721-1724)
Embossed (back of binding): Coat of arms of Cardinal Agostino Spinola (about 1482-1537)
Provenance
Possibly entered the collection of Roman aristocrat and author Baron Pietro Ercole Visconti (1803-1880) from the Archivio Colonna in Rome.Collection of the scholar and critic Charles Eliot Norton (1827–1908), Cambridge, Massachusetts.Purchased by Isabella Stewart Gardner from Charles Eliot Norton on 3 April 1908 for $2,000 with other manuscripts.
Commentary
Isabella Stewart Gardner kept meticulous records of many of her acquisitions. In keeping with this legacy, object information is continually being reviewed, updated, and enriched in order to give greater access to the collection.
Bibliography
Giuseppe Bustelli. "La vita e la fama di Vittoria Colonna." Rivista bolognese di scienze, lettere ed arti, vol. I (1867), p. 349-59, 470-90. Maria (Fletcher) Roscoe. Vittoria Colonna: her life and poems (London, 1868) pp. 356-57. Vittoria Colonna. "Lettere scritte a Pietro Aretino (Venice, 1551)" in Vittoria Colonna: Carteggio raccolto e pubblicato da Ermanno Ferrero e Giuseppe Müller (Turin, 1892), pp. 150-51.Maud F. Jerrold, Vittoria Colonna: with some account of her friends and her times (London, 1906), p. 114. Isabella Stewart Gardner. A Choice of Manuscripts and Bookbindings from the Library of Isabella Stewart Gardner, Fenway Court (Boston, 1922), pp. 80-81. Seymour de Ricci and W.J. Wilson. Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada, Vol. I (New York, 1935), p. 935, no. 34.Gilbert Wendel Longstreet and Morris Carter. General Catalogue (Boston, 1935), p. 251.Alan Bullock. "Four Unpublished Autographs by Vittoria Colonna in American and European Libraries, Together with New Data for a Critical Edition of Her Correspondence." Italica (Summer, 1972), pp. 202-204. Paul Oskar Kristeller. Iter italcium accedunt alia itinera: a finding list of uncatalogued or incompletly catalogued humanistic manuscripts of the Renaissance in Italian and other libraries, vol. V (London, 1990), p. 222, no. 34.Elizabeth Anne McCauley, "A Sentimental Traveler: Isabella Stewart Gardner in Venice" in Elizabeth Anne McCauley et al. Gondola Days: Isabella Stewart Gardner and the Palazzo Barbaro Circle. Exh. cat. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; Venice: Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, 2004), p. 39.Anne-Marie Eze. "Italian Illuminated Manuscripts at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum." Rivista di storia della miniatura (2012), pp. 91, 94. Anne-Marie Eze in Jeffery F. Hamburger et al. Beyond Words: Illuminated Manuscripts in Boston Collections. Exh. cat. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; Newton: McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College; Cambridge: Houghton Library, Harvard University, 2016), p. 233, no. 2.Shannon McHugh, "The Mythical, Powerful Vittoria Colonna," Inside the Collection (blog), Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 30 November 2021, https://www.gardnermuseum.org/blog/mythical-powerful-vittoria-colonna
Gallery
Long Gallery
Case
Dante Case
Rights and reproductions
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